Stephen Wolfe Makes a Segregationist Case for ‘Christian Nationalism’
The Case for Christian Nationalism, by Stephen Wolfe, Canon Press, 488 pages, $24.99
Because the 2016 election, the time period Christian nationalism has been used, narrowly, to explain conservative Christian assist for Donald Trump and, broadly, to explain any right-wing imaginative and prescient of Christian politics that left-wing observers deplore. That is ironic given the phrase’s historical past: It started between the world wars with liberal Protestants anxious concerning the rise of totalitarianism, and it was revived within the Nineteen Seventies to explain spiritual anti-colonialism.
We should always extra correctly consult with Christian nationalisms. American historical past is crammed with various conceptions of nationhood amongst spiritual peoples. Respectable Christian nationalism is also known as “civil faith,” as when politicians declare America a shining “metropolis on a hill.” However Christian nationalisms are all the time contested. The preferred postcard of 1865 pictured the ascent into heaven of the martyred Abraham Lincoln nestled within the bosom of George Washington. But till 2019, vacationers on Interstate 95 in Virginia might detour to go to the “shrine” of Stonewall Jackson, a slain saint of an opposing, Accomplice Christian nationalism.
The Christian nationalist variant getting essentially the most public consideration in the present day has a Pentecostal inflection. Journalists can not resist the spectacle, whether or not it’s self-proclaimed prophet Lance Wallnau peddling $45 “prayer cash” that includes Trump’s face superimposed over that of the Persian King Cyrus, pastor Rafael Cruz selling Trump as a champion of the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” or televangelist Paula White-Cain praying for “angelic reinforcement” to spice up Trump’s reelection.
However one other variant has made waves lately with the publication of Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism. Wolfe, an evangelical Presbyterian, argues that trendy Christians have forgotten the political knowledge of early Protestant reformers and have been lulled right into a harmful secularism. He advocates an ethnically uniform nation dominated by a “Christian prince” with the ability to punish blasphemy and false faith.
Wolfe veers chapter by chapter between shut readings of usually obscure Reformation theologians and principally unsourced screeds towards the hazards of feminist “gynocracy” and immigrant invasion. The ebook is obtusely argued, poorly written, and value a learn solely in the identical sense that rubbernecking at a automotive crash counts as sightseeing. However the ways in which Wolfe is flawed are instructive.
For Wolfe, the nationalism a part of Christian nationalism is synonymous with ethnicity, which he defines as any self-conscious group of individuals possessing “the best to be for itself.” Wolfe doesn’t grapple with the huge literature on how ethnicity is socially constructed, preferring as a substitute what he calls a “phenomenological” clarification based mostly on his private expertise and reasoning.
Wolfe’s view of nationwide ethnicity outcomes from his perception within the significance of “particularity,” which he defines because the variations amongst teams that come up from our “pure inclination to dwell amongst comparable folks.” He argues that if one thing is pure it have to be good, as a result of pure issues have been a part of the created order previous to the sinful fall of humanity.
That leads Wolfe to invest about which human establishments and intuitions are pure and thus good. The class seems to incorporate civil authorities, patriarchy, and, bizarrely, looking. Conveniently, the class of pure issues consists of no matter Wolfe feels most strongly about. He sacralizes his private preferences with none reflection on the lengthy historical past of Christians studying their culturally knowledgeable beliefs and practices again into holy writ.
Because of this, Wolfe has composed a segregationist political theology. If ethnic variations are the pure order of issues and if the pure order is sweet, he causes, then these variations ought to dictate the bounds of an ethnically homogenous Christian nation. Wolfe denies that he’s making a white nationalist argument, partly on the grounds that he has nonwhite buddies and partly as a result of “the designation ‘white’ is tactically unuseful.” However black buddies or not, in the event you wished to inject a sacralized white supremacy into the conservative mainstream, this ebook can be a primer on canine whistling previous that specific graveyard.
Different reviewers have highlighted Wolfe’s racist associations. The ebook’s writer started as a conceit label for a self-described “paleo-Accomplice.” Wolfe co-hosted a politics podcast with a closeted white supremacist named Thomas Achord, who as soon as known as black males “chimps.”
However the issue right here runs deeper than mere associations. Wolfe repeatedly incorporates infamous white supremacists into his argument, together with the neo-Nazi William Gayley Simpson, the antisemite Ernest Renan, and the virulent racist Enoch Powell. His first chapter opens with a quote affirming “tribal habits” from Samuel Francis, whom the racist author Jared Taylor as soon as praised because the “premier thinker of white racial consciousness of our time.” Wolfe’s fascination with such concepts predates this ebook: He has additionally written an essay linking Francis’ concept of “anarcho-tyranny” to black folks’s allegedly innate criminality.
Worry permeates The Case for Christian Nationalism, particularly in Wolfe’s record of 38 aphorisms summarizing his grievances towards a altering tradition. Not solely is feminism assumed to be dangerous, however we supposedly “reside underneath a gynocracy—a rule by girls” who emasculate males by implementing “female virtues, corresponding to empathy, equity, and equality.” Racism solely comes up when Wolfe calls on Christians to disregard accusations of bigotry. And he argues that the way forward for America is dependent upon maintaining kids at dwelling into their 20s, rising your individual meals, weightlifting to maintain testosterone ranges excessive, and avoiding vegetable oil.
When worry propels one’s political venture, it generates paranoid delusions. It’s delusional to suggest that the pathway ahead for conservative Christians—residing in a society during which spiritual “nones” outnumber every other single spiritual group—is violent revolution on behalf of a Presbyterian prince who will punish blasphemers. Whereas there are nonetheless challenges to non secular freedom in America, there has by no means earlier than been a society in human historical past the place Christians have been so free to worship, communicate, and reside out their religion.
Karl Deutsch as soon as outlined a nation as any “group of individuals united by a mistaken view concerning the previous and a hatred of their neighbors.” Wolfe’s nativist imaginative and prescient of a Christian nation and his acknowledged aversion to arguing from historical past match that definition in each regards. Like a socialist who declares that true communism has by no means been tried, Wolfe naively asserts the desirability of state-sponsored faith and hardly bothers to show it ever really labored.
Wolfe presents a short apologetic for spiritual institution in colonial Massachusetts, gullibly accepting the phrase of varied Puritan leaders that the punishments they meted out to non secular dissidents have been simply and proportionate. However state violence is critical for any such religio-political venture. In Puritan Massachusetts, Quakers risked having their ears reduce off and their tongues “bored by means of with a sizzling iron,” and so they confronted execution in the event that they persevered of their blasphemy.
That is the sordid actuality of the unique “metropolis on a hill.” When Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was confronted with what Wolfe would possibly name a “gynocracy”—i.e., girls questioning his theology—he responded by digging up Mary Dyer’s stillborn daughter and publishing a pamphlet blaming the child’s bodily deformities on her mom’s heresy. Dyer fled to England and have become a Quaker; when she returned to Massachusetts, Winthrop’s successor hanged her. Earlier than the platform dropped, her former pastor known as on her to repent to save lots of her life. She replied, “Nay, man, I’m not now to repent.” Then requested if she desired the church elders to wish for her soul, she scolded, “I do know by no means an Elder right here.” Dyer’s execution is a reminder that Christian nationalism is of course entangled with state violence.
Spiritual dissidents have been each the beneficiaries and the architects of the decline of non secular institution. When Quakers threw their our bodies into the gears of the Puritans’ Christian nationalist equipment, their bravery impressed Roger Williams to go away Massachusetts and located a haven of non secular toleration in Rhode Island. A century later, evangelical pastors like Isaac Backus and John Leland fought towards spiritual institution with pulpit and pen. But a few of their modern-day descendants have forgotten that, to cite Leland, “these institutions metamorphose the church right into a creature…which has a pure tendency to make males conclude that bible faith is nothing however a trick of state.”
Wolfe opens his ebook with the story of the storming of the Bastille within the French Revolution as an instance the innate hostility of secularism to faith. However in the event you ever go to Paris, cease by just a little museum on the left financial institution of the Seine containing the disembodied heads of sculptures depicting the 28 kings of Judah. They embellished Notre Dame Cathedral till a revolutionary mob lopped them off, assuming that they need to depict the kings of France. It was not easy secularism that led to this mistaken defacement; it was standard backlash towards French Christian nationalism, which had granted its “Christian prince” an absolute, divine proper of kings. Secular hostility to faith is discovered habits, a self-fulfilling prophecy rooted within the state’s previous makes an attempt to repress spiritual dissent and coerce a extra Christian society.
Wolfe’s ethnicized imaginative and prescient of Christian nationalism is a reminder that, in a post-liberal vacuum, fearful American Christians have turn into straightforward targets for folks whispering to take up the sword of the state and smite their foes.
